


Just Need Enough of You to Dull the Pain

by clockworkmargaret (morganya)



Category: Nathan Barley (TV)
Genre: Date Rape Drug/Roofies, Dubious Consent, F/M, Public Sex, Sibling Incest, Victim Blaming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-18
Updated: 2016-09-18
Packaged: 2018-08-15 17:49:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8066950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morganya/pseuds/clockworkmargaret
Summary: Claire gets into a situation she can't handle. So does Dan.





	

The only reason Claire was in this fucking club with these fucking people was because Nathan had promised that he would introduce her to a private investor, one of his fucking bored trust fund mates, and who knew, maybe this would be the one thing that worked out for her.

Nathan had been gone for twenty minutes. Her gin and tonic, tenderly nursed, had finally shuffled off its mortal coil. She'd smoked three cigarettes and counted all of the spiky white fiber optic trees lining the walls of the club. The bass from the sound system was shaking the floor.

"Hey, sis," Dan said flatly.

Claire turned her head. Dan was slouched against the wall. He had a beer bottle in one hand and a glass of something vivid orange in the other, cucumber and pineapple jutting from the rim.

"Thought you had a deadline," she said.

"Supposed to be covering this prillip DJ but she hasn't showed up. Can't leave until she does. Why are you here?"

"Waiting for someone," she said.

"You're 'waiting for someone,'" Dan said, in the mimicking voice she hated. "Who? You find someone new to fuck then?"

"Fuck off," Claire said. She recognized this mood now. Drunk happy Dan she could handle, but drunk angry Dan was unpredictable and better left alone. "I'm meeting an _investor_ , Dan. For the film."

"Ohh," Dan exhaled mockingly.

"He's a friend of Nathan's."

"Ahh. Clearly he's top quality then."

"Go away."

He looked at her. "Can I borrow some money?"

Claire didn't say anything. One part of her wanted to remind him of the running tally of favors and money and everything else that he owed her, and the other part of her was still thirteen years old and knew with absolute certainty that her big brother was the coolest and smartest and handsomest and greatest man who ever lived.

Whatever. She'd just add it to his tally. She dug in her wallet and threw a bill on the table. He at least had the grace to look ashamed of himself before taking it.

She heard Nathan shouting over the music. Dan said, "Shit," and made a fast retreat. Nathan appeared seconds later, dragging a bloke in an artfully torn shirt, carrying two glasses, behind him.

"Hey, where'd the preacherman go?" Nathan asked her. "Claire, babes, like you to meet –"

The bloke slid into the seat beside her, flashing an expensive-looking smile. She smiled back and extended a hand. "Claire Ashcroft."

"Well, I'd better go catch up with Preach," Nathan said, answering a question no one had asked. "I'll just leave you to it, tiddly tits. Peace and fucking!" He disappeared back into the club.

Claire's hand was still extended. The bloke pressed a sweaty glass of something blue into it. "So tell me about yourself, Claire Ashcroft."

"I thought I'd tell you about the film, actually," she said.

"Right, the film. Cheers to that." He raised his glass. She clinked hers against it. "Tell me about it."

The drink tasted like liquid boiled sweets, and she had to make an effort not to gulp it in one go. "It's a documentary. I supposed I was inspired by Barbara Kopple's work a bit."

"Right, right, Barbara Castle, right."

"Kopple."

"Oh, yeah. Carry on."

"Well, I wanted to make a film that looks at the disenfranchised, the outcast, the rejected. People on the outskirts of everyday society trying to better themselves as much as they can."

"Right, uh-huh."

The world was going soft focus around the edges. The bass shaking the floor was creeping up through her shoes and into her ankles, wrapping around the bones. She took another drink and said, "I've filmed a choir – they were junkies – it's a junkie choir. They're not junkies now. They write songs about being on drugs and go around performing them."

"Really?" He flashed her another smile, teeth very large and very bright and sharp. "They write about what it was like to be on drugs?"

Something cold and awful twisted in her stomach. She wanted to get up but her ankles were trapped by the pulsating floor. "What the fuck have you done?" she managed around a tongue drowning in sugar.

"Nothing that you won't like," he said kindly.

"Oh, God," she said. She could feel her traitorous body reacting, like he'd rung a fucking chemical bell and she'd started salivating. Her nipples were hard against the cotton of her shirt, sweat gathering in the small of her back. The world got gauzier and gauzier and she had no choice but to go along with it.

He moved closer and curled his fingers around her hip, cologne strong enough to gag her, too close too close and where was his other hand there it was against her belly and he was pulling her in couldn't move flopped there against his shoulder like a sack of flour must look for all the world like just a snog two lovebirds and his hand under her shirt against her nipple oh no no no no no _no_ -

And suddenly a familiar voice and a huge hand grabbing her arm and yanking her to her feet, Dan saying, "I need a word with my _sister_ ," and maybe there were protests, apologies, but she didn't hear them over Dan hauling her, stumbling, teetering, over the floor that wouldn't stop moving.

Dan was talking to her but she didn't really know what he was saying, a steady stream of angry consonants rushing past her ears, and she wasn't sure if he was angry at her, the bloke, Nathan, or himself. His grip was tight on her arm.

He came to an abrupt stop, away from the lights and the people, in a corridor, fake white fiber optic trees sprouting from fake green PVC pots. "So you've decided to fuck an idiot, Claire? What do you think you're doing?"

She stood, staggered, crashed against him, her knees buckling. He bent to support her weight, tried to hold her up. Her face was pressed up against his neck, her mouth against his Adam's apple, the tip of her tongue flicking against his skin, sweaty, sour, bitter.

Her brother. Her big, big brother.

"Dan," she said against his skin, wet, muffled. "Dan."

She could tell he was hard. She knew he had something twisted in his head about her and other men – maybe he liked watching the bloke and her. Maybe he got off on getting to be the hero for once. "Dan," she crooned.

"Claire," he pleaded. "Not – we can't."

She grabbed him by the hair, ground her hips against his jeans. The gauzy world zoomed in on Dan's face, his desperate eyes. " _Fuck_ ," he growled, and backed her against the wall.

It was a new song but it was an old dance, her clutching onto him while he shoved his hand down her knickers, two tobacco-stained fingers against her clit, her hand digging into the scruff of his neck. He was holding her up because she couldn't stand on her own.

Dan never bothered with preparing, with pleasantries. It was always fast strokes against her clit, rough and silent, and the bastard fit inside her so well that it never failed to bring her off. If she were a different person, she'd have hated him for it.

Once upon a time, Claire thought, her parents thought that she was going to meet a nice Northern lad and get married and have lots of babies, and that Dan was finally going to settle down, sober up and get a decent job. Once upon a time her friends at school thought she was just too studious and intense for a boyfriend, instead of being hung up on her brother. Once upon a time, Claire thought, she was going to be a great filmmaker and Dan was going to be the next Hunter S. Thompson.

Instead they ruined each other.

She came and gagged at the same time, cloying chemicals rising up through her throat. Dan said, "Claire?" She retched up bile onto his shirt.

"Fucking hell," he said, and half-carried her over to one of the PVC pots. She coughed and heaved while he held her hair and rubbed her back, talking softly, like the brother she remembered, like the brother he used to be, like the brother she still wished he was.


End file.
